Honoring Ruth Millikan
Ruth Millikan is Emeritus Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UConn. Quoting from her web page, Ruth’s “research interests span many topics in the philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and ontology.” She is a highly respected and influential philosopher. From her Wikipedia page:
She was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize and gave the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in 2002.[3] She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014 [4] and received, in 2017, both the Nicholas Rescher Prize for Systematic Philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh[5] and the Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy.[6]
On April 30th I had the great honor of presenting a few remarks at an event held to celebrate Ruth’s contributions and to inaugurate the Ruth Garrett Millikan Endowment to support graduate students. Daniel Dennett was the featured speaker, and he highlighted Ruth’s contributions, focusing especially on one of her early books – Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories – and her most recent one – Beyond Concepts. If you want to understand why her work is so important, you’ll need to read those books yourself. Her Wikipedia page provides only a very brief summary.
My comments focused on why graduate education, particularly PhD education, and financial support for graduate education is vital. On the off chance you’re interested in reading what I had to say, the full text of my remarks follows.